Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume IV

Schmidt Number: S-5922

On-line since: 30th April, 2011

IV

If we wish
our human thought and action to be permeated once more by spiritual
life, it will be necessary to receive again in full earnestness such
conceptions of the spiritual world as have passed through our souls in
these last lectures. For many centuries these conceptions have in
reality been lacking to mankind and notably to civilised mankind.

Looking back
into various epochs of human history we shall find how in earlier ages
human action upon earth was everywhere connected with what was taking
place in the super-sensible. It is not that a consciousness of the
super-sensible — a certain abstract consciousness of it — has
been lacking to the greater part of mankind in recent times. No —
but the courage has been lacking to attach the concrete deeds and
happenings in the earthly sphere to the equally real forms of life and
movement in spiritual worlds.

With our
recent studies we are coming to do this once more. And we do so
especially when we bring the earthly life of men, as we have been doing
here, into connection with the life between death and a new birth, when
we connect what is taking place in one earthly life with that which is
accomplished in the successive lives of man.

We have
begun to consider that spiritual, super-sensible stream of which I was
allowed to say that it is connected with our present stream of Michael
in the service of which Anthroposophy has placed itself. We have thus
entered upon the path which in a certain sense is to approach the karma
of the Anthroposophical Movement itself, and at the same time, the karma
of the individuals who unite the life of their soul and spirit
sincerely, out of a straightforward inner impulse, with the
Anthroposophical Movement.

I told you
of a super-sensible event which took place under the aegis as it were of
the Michael Power at the very time when the Council of 869 was taking
place on earth. We know how deeply the whole life and civilisation of
the Middle Ages was influenced by that Council. We need only watch the
deep reserve with which enlightened spirits in the Middle Ages avoid
speaking of the threefold human being, of body, soul and spirit. For the
8th Œcumenical Council at Constantinople had declared the doctrine
of the threefold man heretical. Considering the power of such edicts in
the Middle Ages it is quite clear that the whole of the spiritual life
here on earth then had to take its course as it were under the shadow of
this declaration which condemned Trichotomy as heretical.

But all the
more intense was that spiritual life which has been working for a long
time preparing the Michael stream for the 20th century, the Michael
stream in which we stand since the last third of the 19th century and in
which mankind will be for three or four centuries to come.

To-day we
will speak of the course of this stream of Michael to which we have
already begun to turn attention. Then, next Sunday, we shall approach
more nearly matters connected on the one hand with the karma of the
Anthroposophical Movement, and on the other hand karmically with the
spiritual and intellectual life of the present time.

I told you
of a kind of super-sensible Council which took place in spiritual regions
over the earth at the same time as the 8th Œcumenical Council in
Constantinople. In that spiritual council there met together the
individualities of Haroun al Raschid and of his wise counsellor, and
also the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle. Moreover there were
also gathered there the individualities from the time of the spiritual
service of King Arthur; and as I explained, all this took place under
the aegis of Michael.

Then I told
you how Haroun al Raschid appeared again, bringing with him into Europe
an oriental spiritual life with an Aristotelian doctrine that had become
unchristian. I told you how he appeared again as Bacon, Lord Bacon of
Verulam, who had a great influence on the spiritual life of Europe, but
an influence of an essentially materialistic tendency. Moreover I told
you how the counsellor of Haroun al Raschid whom I had described,
appeared again as Amos Comenius. Much is said, and justly, in praise of
Amos Comenius. Nevertheless, in one aspect, in his striving to introduce
clear pictorial representations into the methods of teaching, he worked
powerfully for materialism. For in effect, he laid the greatest stress
upon the immediate perception of things with the physical senses.

Thus we see
bursting in upon this earthly life at the end of the 16th and beginning
of the 17th century, a stream which lies not in the straightforward line
of Christian development, but which brings a foreign element, foreign to
Christianity, into the spiritual and intellectual evolution of Europe.
On the other hand the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander who
remained united with the true stream of Michael worked on and on with
all those who belonged to them. They went on working in the spiritual
worlds.

Moreover
other personalities were working within the same stream, partly in the
spiritual worlds and partly on the earth itself. There were
individualities connected with these spiritual streams and living
between death and a new birth. There were others who appeared as
personalities on earth in the course of the centuries. These were the
individualities connected with Platonism rather than with
Aristotelianism, connected also with all that the Platonic conception
had since become.

Especially
in the centuries following the 9th, we see Platonic spirits descending
on to the earth, spirits of a Platonic trend and orientation. It was
they who continued through the Middle Ages a Christian teaching regarded
as heretical by official Christianity, official Catholicism, but which
was nevertheless the truer Christian teaching. Meanwhile the
individualities who continued the stream of Christian Aristotelianism
remained, to begin with, in the spiritual worlds. For with the given
conditions of evolution there was no real point of attachment for their
stream down on the earth in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. On
the other hand, those who were more Platonic in character could unfold
their spiritual life with remarkable intensity in isolated places, in
isolated provinces as it were of the spirit. Interspersed with the Roman
Catholic kind of Christianity which asserted itself more and more
officially, we find individuals gathered in schools here and there,
carrying on traditions of the ancient Mysteries and illuminating
Christianity from these ancient sources. And there was one place where
all these streams of old tradition seemed to flow together. I mean, of
course, the School of Chartres, to which I have so often referred in
recent lectures, a school which was spiritual through and through and in
which there worked such great spirits as Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab
Insulis and others. Now what kind of a spiritual life was it which
having thus evolved, flowed at length into the wonderful School of
Chartres, only the external aspects of which have really become known to
mankind? It was a spiritual life which has been completely silted up in
modern times, a spiritual life in which the ancient traditions of the
Mysteries were handed down.

Above all
within that spiritual life we find a deep and spiritually penetrated
conception of Nature, altogether different from that abstract conception
of Nature which was afterwards made so much of, which knows only natural
laws expressed in abstract thought. The spiritual stream to which I now
refer received something spiritual from Nature into the human soul. So
that in all Nature, not only abstract, dead, conceptual natural laws
were recognised, but living creative activity. Men did not look so much
to our present day chemical elements which have since commanded so much
admiration, but they looked all the more deeply at what were called the
Elements in the ancient sense: Earth, Water, Air and Fire. It was not a
question of knowing them in words by mere tradition. The tradition was
impregnated still with the most ancient of the Mysteries. And when this
is so, we see in the Elements what is indeed not present in our seventy
to eighty chemical elements, the world of elemental spirituality the
world of certain elemental beings into which we penetrate when we enter
livingly into the four Elements.

Then we see
how man himself in his outer bodily nature partakes in the life and
movement of the Earth, Water, Air, Fire which become in him the organic
form and figure. They who thus looked into the life and movement of the
Elements, of Earth, Water, Air and Fire did not see mere natural laws,
but behind all this life and movement they saw a great and living Being,
the Goddess Natura. And from their vision they had an immediate feeling
that this Goddess Natura shows only one side of her being to man to
begin with, while the other side remains hidden in the world in which
man spends the time of sleep between falling asleep and reawakening. For
then the ego and astral body are in a spiritual environment which lies
at the foundation of Nature. The ego and astral body are with the
elemental beings who underlie the Elements. Everywhere in the scattered
schools and spiritual centres to which I have referred we find the
teachers speaking to larger or smaller groups of pupils, and telling
them how in the outer phenomena of Nature as they appear to men in
waking life, the Goddess Natura shows only one part of her living and
creative being. While on the other hand, in all the working in the
Elements in wind and weather, in all that surrounds the human being and
constitutes him, there also works what the human being cannot see, what
is hidden from him in the darkness of sleep.

These
scholars of the Middle Ages felt the great Goddess Natura as the Goddess
who ascends for half of the time, revealing herself in the outer
movement and activity of physical sense Nature and who on the other hand
descends nightly and yearly to live and work in fields of creation
hidden from man by the dark consciousness of sleep.

Now this was
the direct continuation of the old conception of Proserpina as it
existed in the ancient Mysteries. We must consider what this signifies.
We to-day have a conception of Nature woven out of abstract thought,
consisting of natural laws, speaking and thinking in abstract terms,
containing nothing that is alive. But in that old conception of nature
they still contemplated Nature as men had once contemplated the very
active Goddess Proserpina, the daughter of Demeter. And in the ideas in
which the pupils of those schools were instructed, proceeding as they
did from a still living tradition, there were many sayings and
expressions which were in reality an exact continuation of what had been
said of Proserpina in the ancient Mysteries.

Then the
teachers would lead the human being from a conception of his bodily life
to an understanding of his life of soul. They made it clear to him: With
respect to your bodily nature you consist of the Elements in which the
elemental beings are working with you. But you also bear the soul within
you. This is not subject to the influence of the Elements alone. On the
contrary it rules over the organisation of the Elements within you and
this your soul stands under the influence of the planetary world, of
Mercury, Jupiter and Venus, of Sun and Moon, Saturn and Mars. Thus if
psychology were to be studied, man's vision was directed upward to the
secrets of the planetary world. The reality of the human being was
extended from the bodily into the soul nature in such a way as to
perceive always the living connection with the universe. From the
working and weaving of the Elements, Earth, Water, Air and Fire, it was
expanded to all that the planets do in the soul-life of man — the
planets in their circling, in their glory, in the actions of their
light, in their mysterious occult influences. Thus from the Goddess
Natura, the successor of Proserpina, they looked up to the
Intelligences, to the Genii of the planets when they wished to
understand the human life of soul.

Then when it
was a question of understanding the spiritual life (for the teachers of
these isolated schools had not let the dogma of the 8th Council of
Constantinople deter them from studying the spirit in itself) —
when it was a matter of considering the spiritual life, they turned
their gaze upwards to the fixed stars, and their configurations. They
looked up above all to what is represented in the Zodiac. And they
regarded what man bears within him as the spirit in connection with the
constellations, the glory of the fixed stars, the spiritual Powers whom
they knew to be there in the stars.

Thus from
the whole universe, from the cosmos, they understood the human being.
Thus the macrocosm was there in reality, and the microcosm, man. Such
was the doctrine of Nature in that time, taught with enthusiasm in
isolated schools and also offered to mankind by isolated individuals who
were scattered here and there. And at length as in a kind of
culmination, all these things were wonderfully reproduced by such
individualities as Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others in
the School of Chartres.

Wonderful
indeed was this School of Chartres. If we look at its writings to-day
they seem, as I already said, like catalogues of names. But in that time
it was not customary to write in any other way of things which one
wished to have before one in full living spirituality. One simply
catalogued them as it were. He however who can read such things, he
above all who can read the order in which they are placed, can very well
perceive how permeated by ancient spirituality are the writings that
come to us from the teachers of Chartres. But the deep spirituality of
the school worked not only in the teaching that was given, nor in the
fact that there were many pupils who carried out again into the world
what they had learnt there. No, it also worked in a direct spiritual
way. The living spirituality that was present in that School radiated
out even in an occult way into the spiritual atmosphere of mankind. We
see the spiritual rays of the School of Chartres passing through France
even into Italy. And in many schools whose outer name has been handed
down to history, a teaching about Nature was given such as I have here
indicated. Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, returning from his
post as an Ambassador in Spain suffered at the same time a slight
sunstroke and a great shock as he came near to Florence, the city of his
fathers. At that moment he was really touched by the occult radiations
of the School of Chartres and underwent an experience which he himself
describes as follows. — He said that as he came near the city of
Florence he entered a deep forest. There he first met three animals and
then he met the Goddess Natura who built up the kingdoms of Nature in
the very way in which this had been taught for centuries as I have
indicated. He, however, beheld it directly. In the semi-pathological
condition which soon passed, what had been taught in the School became
immediate vision to him. Then, having seen the Goddess Natura, the
successor of Proserpina, in her creative work, he beheld how man is
built up out of the Elements and how the soul lives and moves in the
forces of the planets. Then with his thought he was uplifted even into
the heaven of the fixed stars. Thus in his own person he experienced the
whole of this majestic, medieval science. And he was the teacher of
Dante. Had he not been so, had he not given to his pupil Dante what he
had received in this majestic vision, we should not have the Divina
Commedia, for the Divina Commedia is the reflection of Brunetto Latini's
teaching in the soul of Dante.

Now you must
see that in that time there was no other possibility than to work with
such things within the institutions of the Church, and these indeed were
much freer than they afterwards became. In effect, all these teachers of
Chartres belonged to Monastic Orders. We see them wearing the garment of
Cistercians. We see them connected with the good tendencies within the
life of the Christian Monastic Orders.

Then came a
strange phase of development. During the whole of this period, when the
Platonists had been active in the way just described, the Aristotelians
could not work on earth. The conditions were not there. But instead,
they were preparing for the Michael stream in the super-sensible world,
maintaining a continuous connection with those who were working on earth
in the same direction and who then found their way to Chartres. The
School of Chartres was in full flower from the end of the 11th and
throughout the 12th century, and then a kind of super-sensible exchange
of ideas took place between the Platonic souls from the School of
Chartres who were now coming up into the spiritual world through the
gate of death and the Aristotelian souls who had remained above. It was
an exchange of ideas which took place in the Middle Ages at the turn of
the 12th and 13th century, as to the manner of working in the future.
(Earthly terms have to be used for these things, although naturally they
are not really in keeping and can easily make one appear
ridiculous.)

The outcome
of this exchange of ideas — since different conditions now
prevailed in the spiritual life of European humanity — was that
the Platonists who had been so active in Chartres and were now coming up
into the super-sensible world, passed on their mission to the
Aristotelians. And these Aristotelian souls now descended into the
physical world in order to carry forward in the way that conditions
allowed, what I will call the cosmic service of Michael.

Within the
Dominican Order, where they were active in the most manifold ways, we
find again those souls who worked more in the Aristotelian sense. For
the work on earth, the Platonic souls were replaced, so to speak, by the
Aristotelian souls. And now there developed that system of thought which
in truth can be rightly appraised to-day only within the
Anthroposophical Movement — I once gave lectures here on the true
form and background of Scholasticism
[The Redemption of Thinking. A Study in the Philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas.
Three lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1920. Translated and edited
with an Introduction, Epilogue and Appendices, by A. P. Shepherd and
Mildred Robertson Nicholl (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1956).]
— there developed medieval Scholasticism, the teaching which in an
age already hastening towards materialism strove to preserve as much
spirituality in human concepts as it is possible to preserve.

Before Bacon of Verulam and Comenius appeared on earth,
Scholasticism had been carrying forward the service of Michael. We see
how Scholasticism, the so-called realistic school of philosophy, strove
to rescue the source of spirituality which man bears in his thoughts.
The Scholastics ascribe reality to that which man grasps through his
thoughts. It is a thin, attenuated spirituality that could there be
rescued, but it is spirituality.

Thus is the
spiritual life carried forward in the evolution of the worlds. Seeing it
in its reality, possessing the science of Initiation, we can do no
other: we must always perceive the physical, or that which takes place
in physical history upon earth, together with the spiritual that
permeates it, coming from spiritual worlds. Thus we reach a united and
harmonious conception. First, until the time of Chartres, the Platonic
souls are working, and then the Aristotelian. We first behold the
Aristotelian souls influencing with inspiration from the super-sensible
worlds the teachers who, as Platonic souls, are dwelling upon earth,
teaching and unfolding science upon earth in earthly forms of
understanding. We gaze into this living interplay; we see the teacher of
Chartres sitting there on this earthly ground, unfolding his studies
that are permeated by spiritual vision, while there penetrates into this
earthly scene the inspiring ray from the Aristotelian soul above,
bringing the Platonically coloured teachings into the right channels. It
is a very different conception of life from what is usual to-day. For in
external life men are so fond of contrasting and dividing Platonists
from Aristotelians. But in reality it is not so. The times and epochs of
the earth require teachings to be given, now in Platonic, now in
Aristotelian terms. But if our wisdom includes the super-sensible life in
the background, we perceive the one fructifying the other, the one
enclosed within the other.

Then again, when the Aristotelians were
teaching in the Dominican Order, the Platonic souls, who were now once
more in the spiritual world, were the inspiring genii. They had already
come to an understanding in the spiritual worlds with these Aristotelian
souls who afterwards descended to the earth. Life was altogether
different in those times. One may believe it or not, but it was so.
Looking back spiritually into those Middle Ages we find such a spirit as
Alanus ab Insulis sitting in his lonely cell, given up to his studies,
and receiving from the super-sensible world, like a spirit-visitor who
comes to him as a companion, an Aristotelian soul. Nay, even afterwards,
when the Aristotelians appear in the Dominican Order, there is still a
powerful consciousness of belonging to the spiritual world. We can see
it in such an instance as the following. One of the Dominican teachers
descends into the physical earth-life earlier than another soul with
whom he is united. The other soul remains behind in the spiritual world
to begin with, in order to accomplish something there which he will
afterwards carry down to his companion who went before him. And at
length the two are working together again on the earth. All this takes
place with consciousness. In their work and activity they know
themselves to be in living connection with the spiritual
world.

Subsequent history has left no trace of
these things. But, my dear friends, to know the truth about historical
life we must not seek to derive it alone from the documents of modern
time. Moreover, we must see life with open-minded vision. It may be that
it unfolds in circles with which perhaps we can have little sympathy.
Yet we must see it as something which is placed by karma into these very
circles, and the inner significance of which is altogether
different.

The task and possibility of thus reading in
the real events has come to me in many remarkable ways during my life.
Only now do I perceive and penetrate many an experience that I have met
with in the course of my life, clear and distinct like an occult
writing. Indeed for the most significant of our experiences karma works
and weaves in deep and mysterious ways. And if I may say so, there is a
very strong karma underlying the fact that to-day and in recent times,
at many places, I have been speaking of such things as the School of
Chartres, and what preceded and what came after it. For the greatest of
those who taught in the School of Chartres belonged to the Cistercian
Order. Now the Cistercian Order, like the other Orders in the Catholic
stream of development, has become decadent, but in this growing
decadence there is also much illusion of appearance. For individualities
occasionally find themselves in outer life-connections to which they do
not properly belong, while in reality they are carrying forward old
threads of spiritual life which are indeed of the greatest value for
Anthroposophy itself. But life and karma brings them into these outer
connections. Thus I have always been struck by the fact that from my
earliest youth, until a certain period of life, something of the
Cistercian Order again and again approached me. Having gone through the
elementary school, I narrowly escaped — for reasons which I
explained in my autobiography
The Story of My Life
— becoming a pupil in gymnasium or grammar school conducted
by the Cistercian Order. Everything seemed to be leading in this direction;
but my parents, as I have explained, eventually decided to send me to the
modern school instead. Thus I did not become a pupil in the grammar
school connected with the Cistercians, and, needless to say, this was
also for very good karmic reasons.

But the modern school which I attended was
only five steps away from the Cistercian grammar school. Thus we made
the acquaintance of all those excellent Cistercian teachers whose work
was indeed of a high quality at that time. I need not speak of the Order
itself; it is the individuals to whom I refer. To this day I think with
profound appreciation of one of those Cistercian priests who taught
German literature at that grammar school with deep enthusiasm. And I see
the Cistercian priest before me in many other individualities, in the
Alleegasse in Wiener Neustadt, where the teachers used to walk up and
down before the school hours began — Cistercian priests in
civilian costume, eminently gifted men. At that time I was far more
concerned to read the essays of the teachers in the school year-book at
the end of the year, than the ordinary text-books during the year. I
read with keen devotion what these Cistercians wrote of their own wisdom
in the year-book of the grammar school in Wiener Neustadt.

In short, the Cistercian Order was near to
me. And without a doubt (though these of course are hypotheses such as
one uses only for purposes of illustration), if I had gone to the
Cistercian school I should, as a matter of course, have become a
Cistercian.

Then I came to Vienna. (All these things are described in
The Story of My Life.
After a time I came
into the circle around Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, where many professors
of the theological faculty in Vienna used to gather. I learned to know
some of them intimately. All those professors were members of the
Cistercian Order. Thus once again I came together with Cistercians, and
through the currents which flow through the Cistercian Order to-day, I
have been able to follow many things back into the past.

To show how karma works I will refer to one
event. I had to give a lecture. Now through the afternoon teas at delle
Grazie's I had grown well acquainted with the Cistercian professors of
theology who frequented her house. I gave a lecture. A priest of the
Cistercian Order was there — a remarkable and excellent
man. When I had finished my lecture he made a very peculiar remark, the
nature of which I will only indicate by saying: he uttered words in
which was contained his memory of having been together with me in a
former life on earth.

Such things do indeed educate us for life. It was in the year 1889. In
Das Goetheanum,
[The weekly periodical published at the Goetheanum,
Dornach, Switzerland. Rudolf Steiner died before the autobiographical
essays had been completed, but those that were available have been
collected in the book
The Course of My Life.]
of course, I could only
take the external aspect of these things; but my autobiographical essays
will be published as a book with added notes in which the inner aspect
will also be duly dealt with. Here, you see, I have told you something
of the karmic foundations which have made it possible for me to speak at
all in this form about these particular spiritual streams. For one
cannot study these things by mere study. One's study of them must
consist in life itself.

Thus I have shown how the
Platonic stream and the Aristotelian worked together. Then the
Aristotelians too went once more through the gate of death. And as we
know, with the age of the Spiritual Soul, materialism became more and
more predominant on earth. But at the very time when materialism took
its start on earth there was founded in the super-sensible worlds a kind
of Michael School. As I said, we can refer to these things only with our
everyday terminology. It was a far-spread School of Michael in
which spirits like Bernardus Sylvestris and Alanus ab Insulis were
united after death. And with them once more Alexander
and Aristotle. These and other human souls who were not in earthly
incarnation at that time, were united here with spiritual beings who,
though they spend their lives without ever being incarnated on the
earth, are yet connected with earthly souls. Michael himself was a
Teacher, gazing back over all that had been the great teachings of the
ancient Mysteries, comprehending in a marvellous sweep of vision the
secrets of the ancient Mysteries, and opening out at the same time a
mighty panorama of what was to come.

In one form or another we find certain souls
who took part in that super-sensible school in the 14th/15th century.
They had been connected together in many lives on earth. We find them
among the hosts which strive towards the stream of Michael, receiving
into the impulses of their will what we may call: The will to be united
with the stream of Michael.

We gaze upon these souls. Very few of them
were on earth. Most of them were in the life between death and a new
birth, partaking in that super-sensible gathering, in that spiritual
school. We find them there, these souls, we find them there, harkening
to the teachings of Michael, and we find them again to-day in the souls
who, connected on the earth, unfold a sincere and upright striving of
their inner life towards the Anthroposophical Movement.

In the karma of those who tend with
inner sincerity towards the Anthroposophical Movement, there lie
the deep impulses, the karmic significance of which must again be
studied in the spiritual worlds themselves. Of course the fact that
those souls were driven by their karma to such a heavenly community at
that time, is due again to the fact that in former earthly lives they
had shaped their karma accordingly, so that it led them there.
Nevertheless one cannot recognise the karma of human souls without
looking, not only at what happens at any given time on earth, but also
at what happens between death and a new birth.

Our outlook on the world is infinitely
enriched by this. Contemplating the souls who labour in the world
— and in the last resort this applies to all men — we no
longer have to begin at the point where they enter earthly existence, or
cease at the point where they die; for in effect they neither then begin
to work, nor do they cease. And in all that takes place spiritually, not
only the souls that are incarnated on the earth to-day are working, but
other souls, who are now between death and a new birth, and who send
their rays of influence in upon the earth. In our own actions their
impulses are contained. For all these things work together, even as the
deeds on earth penetrate into the heavenly regions, and continue working
there, as I indicated pictorially, for instance, in the characters of
Capesius and Strader in the first Mystery Play.

Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, he is
there. He died. He went through the gate of death, but death itself is a
transformation of life. He is still there. He works on, and we find him
if we seek him spiritually.

The picture of the spiritual evolution of
mankind is made complete if we are able to include the so-called dead.
Nay, in reality, they are far more living than the so-called living. In
very many things that happen on the earth we find Brunetto Latini living
and working to-day, although he is not incarnate on the earth. Thus you
will see how intimately united the earthly life is with the
super-sensible. We cannot speak at all of a super-sensible world separated
from the earthly world of sense. For everything that is of the senses is
permeated at the same time supersensibly, and everything that is
super-sensible is revealed somewhere and somewhen in the world of sense.
Moreover we can only truly receive and understand the earthly life if we
recognise that these things are behind it.

This, my dear friends, is to be the
future of the Anthroposophical Movement since the Christmas Foundation
Meeting. We must treat of the super-sensible facts openly and without
reserve, confessing them in fullness of knowledge. This should be the
esoteric trait permeating the Anthroposophical Movement. Thus alone will
it be possible to give it its real spiritual content.

For you see, all that I described to you as
the stream of Michael has gone on into our time. But individualities
appearing again on earth have to make use, in the first place, of the
physical bodies that are possible in a given age. They must find their
way into the impulses of education which a given age provides. In the
materialistic age all these things become their external garment. And
our materialistic age offers the greatest imaginable hindrances to souls
who had a rich spirituality in former lives on earth. To pour this
spirituality into the bodies of this age, especially when they have to
be prepared by modern educational methods, is extraordinarily difficult.
Thus you need not wonder when I say: The souls which strive earnestly
towards Anthroposophy are to be found in this way in former epochs of
evolution. We cannot lay the foundations of true knowledge unless we can
perceive the real interplay of all that lives and works in the world.
For spiritual research itself depends on the spiritual life and requires
us to seek the spiritual along its own true path. The paths of the
spirit are different in every age. In our age they are possible only if
we have beneath our feet the firm ground of a spiritual knowledge of
external Nature.

The former age which I described within the
stream of Michael was followed by one which here on the earth shows an
altogether materialistic aspect, an age in which all things are
developed materialistically. In the super-sensible evolution of
this age there is the most intensive work of preparation for the
impulses of Michael, which have now been carried down, so to speak, from
heaven to the earth. But this new age to-day cannot take its start from
what has gone before in the last few centuries. We must indeed be
familiar with the things that have unfolded upon earth in the last few
centuries, but we cannot take our start from them. With the
consciousness of this modern age we must take our start from what has
taken place in the super-sensible during the last few centuries. In
saying this we touch upon ground which must become the basis of
anthroposophical life and work in this present time. Conceptions such as
I have explained in the last few lectures must not merely be received
with cold intellect and indifferent hearts. They must be received by the
full human being, by the whole compass of the human heart and mind.
Anthroposophy can mean something for mankind only if it is received with
the whole compass of the human heart and soul.

Such is the foundation of the will of the
Anthroposophical Movement, which is united since the Foundation Meeting
with the Anthroposophical Society. We long that this should enter deeply
into the souls of human beings who are united with this Movement, that
they should grow conscious of what is truly connected with their karma
in the depths of their own souls.

Thus we have laid a kind of foundation, and
from this point we will proceed next Sunday when we will study the
further course of the stream of Michael, so as to perceive its resulting
tasks for Anthroposophy and for the whole spiritual life of the present
time.